The present invention relates to an electronic camera system including an electronic camera and electronic album apparatus.
In recent years, electronic cameras for recording sensed image data not in a silver halide film but in a semiconductor memory are becoming popular. Memory cards used in many types of electronic cameras, each of which has a nonvolatile memory encapsulated, are also greatly increasing their capacities.
However, such a memory card has a limited recording capacity. It is very uneconomical to prepare a number of memory cards because their unit price per image data is very high.
Only the following methods are available to store image data for a long time: the image data are transferred to and recorded in a dedicated electronic album apparatus using a hard disk device or magnetooptical disk device and having a larger recording capacity; a personal computer is used as the electronic album apparatus; the images are printed by a printer apparatus, and then, the original image data are erased; or the data are written on a CD-R by digital data service of a general laboratory.
However, to transfer image files to the dedicated electronic album apparatus or apparatus using a personal computer and record the files, the electronic camera and electronic album apparatus must be connected via a cable, or it is necessary to extract only the recording medium from the electronic camera, appropriately insert the extracted recording medium into an adapter and then set it in the electronic album apparatus, and select only untransmitted image files to transfer and record them, resulting in cumbersomeness.
When an image is printed by a printer apparatus, the image cannot be used later as digital data. This method cannot take the advantage of the electronic camera more expensive than a camera using a silver halide film.
For the method of writing the image data on a CD-R by digital data service of a general laboratory, since it is tedious to take the digital data to the laboratory, and the charge for the service is on the user, the load on the user is heavy.